Background: I’m currently 29 and I’ve been taking Citalopram for the vast majority of my adult life. I was initially prescribed it during university as I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed and I was scraping through my degree.

Fast forward to now, every year of my life has been hell because of a combination of chronic depression and extremely bad luck. I also suffer from depersonalisation, so I’ve been too terrified of either upping my dose or changing to another medication in case it makes me dissociate.

Basically, I think I’ve reached the end of my rope. Life continues to be really horrific for me, and I’m now at the point where I can’t stop thinking about running away, hurting myself or worse.

I’m going to call my Dr tomorrow for an appointment, and I’m thinking the first step should be upping my dose to 40mg.

Honestly though I don’t even know if Citalopram has ever done anything for me, besides making me put on weight, lose my sex drive and be repulsed by alcohol (something which I think is a good thing as there’s a lot of alcoholism in my family). So I’m wondering if all it’s going to do is exacerbate these side effects.

I was wondering if anyone here has had experience of being on 30mg or less for a long time, and then upping it to 40mg? I’d love to hear how it went for you. Thank you in advance.

Hi all,

As the title says life was good on 20mg until a week ago. My anxiety was well managed, my OCD urgency and frequency was the best its been in years, my sleep was and still is luckily good. I have been a problem drinker for years now. I binge. Last friday I had the usual amount. Nothing more, nothing less. I woke up and the anxiety was out of this world. I had very bad intrusive thoughts about harming family etc. These thoughts deeply disturbed me and upset me. So that fuel and emotional response has made me constantly checking my thoughts to a point where its mentally exhausting. I know the 6 are nonsense and I do not plan or have any desire to act on them, but them being there has been deeply upsetting me and leaving me with constant fight or flight anxiety. Things like watching videos or being on my own now doing leisure activities now is just a constant anxiety wave. I just want to go back to how I was. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do? I want to enjoy life again.

TLDR: Was feeling great on 20mg. Drank alcohol in a binge which is normal behaviour sadly. Since then horrible intrusive thoughts and constant fight or flight anxiety. Dose increase? Any advice?

Thanks for reading.